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[Dalisclock]

Took a very brief detour from Majora's Mask to play through The Procession to Calvary. So if you've ever watched an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, you might remember the bits where they took old pictures and such and photoshopped them around to form animations bridging the skits. Well, Procession to Calvary is basically that same idea but as a point and click adventure game. Or in another way, it's an asset flip humor game but pretty much all the assets are public domain renaissance artwork.

There's a simple plot to this one. The "North" under the leadership of Immortal John and the "South" under the leadership of Heavenly Peter have been fighting a bloody war for some time and the North has just won. You play an unnamed Northern Knight who really, really likes stabbing people and wants to keep the murder party going but due to peace you can't. Upon hearing Heavenly Peter escaped to the South, you volunteer to go there and kill him. The game is working through adventure game puzzles to reach heavenly peter and end his life because murder. Also, the unnamed murder happy knight main character is a woman so Hooray for female empowerment?(Okay, it turns out she's based off a painting of Bellona, the Roman Goddess of War so suddenly all the murdering makes more sense now).

They're not anything particularly amazing and most of the appeal is that everything is some weird mashup of classic paintings from the 1500-1700's with a lot of snark and some toilet humor. Oh, and all the music is pieces of classical music played by somebody playing music on screen. Of note, there's 3 endings, and while two are a binary choice at the end of the game, one is basically you killing everyone standing in your path(and some who aren'y) to get to Heavenly Peter like the sociopathic serial killer you are(and bypassing most of the puzzles). Spoiler: This leads to a bad ending because constant murder gets peoples dander up for some reason.

So it's very niche and I could see that if you're the kind of person who goes the art museum and then makes jokes about the paintings, or really liked those monty Python animations AND likes point and click adventure games, this could be something to take a look at. It's also like 2(maybe 3) hours long which is just long enough to sustain this without it wearing out its welcome and costs $10 on steam without a sale.

With that out of the way, back to abusing the shit out of the timeline with my ocarina. I just got the Goron Mask so I can.....do whatever gorons do? Get Rock Hard? No, that's terrible. Forget I said anything.

 

[Worgen]

I started playing Later Alligator. Oh holy shit, its soooo damn cute, if you have any like for point and click and minigames at all then you owe it to yourself to play this game.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Took a very brief detour from Majora's Mask to play through The Procession to Calvary. So if you've ever watched an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, you might remember the bits where they took old pictures and such and photoshopped them around to form animations bridging the skits. Well, Procession to Calvary is basically that same idea but as a point and click adventure game. Or in another way, it's an asset flip humor game but pretty much all the assets are public domain renaissance artwork.

There's a simple plot to this one. The "North" under the leadership of Immortal John and the "South" under the leadership of Heavenly Peter have been fighting a bloody war for some time and the North has just won. You play an unnamed Northern Knight who really, really likes stabbing people and wants to keep the murder party going but due to peace you can't. Upon hearing Heavenly Peter escaped to the South, you volunteer to go there and kill him. The game is working through adventure game puzzles to reach heavenly peter and end his life because murder. Also, the unnamed murder happy knight main character is a woman so Hooray for female empowerment?(Okay, it turns out she's based off a painting of Bellona, the Roman Goddess of War so suddenly all the murdering makes more sense now).

They're not anything particularly amazing and most of the appeal is that everything is some weird mashup of classic paintings from the 1500-1700's with a lot of snark and some toilet humor. Oh, and all the music is pieces of classical music played by somebody playing music on screen. Of note, there's 3 endings, and while two are a binary choice at the end of the game, one is basically you killing everyone standing in your path(and some who aren'y) to get to Heavenly Peter like the sociopathic serial killer you are(and bypassing most of the puzzles). Spoiler: This leads to a bad ending because constant murder gets peoples dander up for some reason.

So it's very niche and I could see that if you're the kind of person who goes the art museum and then makes jokes about the paintings, or really liked those monty Python animations AND likes point and click adventure games, this could be something to take a look at. It's also like 2(maybe 3) hours long which is just long enough to sustain this without it wearing out its welcome and costs $10 on steam without a sale.

With that out of the way, back to abusing the shit out of the timeline with my ocarina. I just got the Goron Mask so I can.....do whatever gorons do? Get Rock Hard? No, that's terrible. Forget I said anything.

Jim/Stephanie Sterling gave this one a positive review. It does look cute, and I think it's on Gamepass.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I am on temporary gaming hiatus. After a Sekiro replay and an enjoyable but grindy victory in Nobody Saves the World, I'm kind of not wanting to play anything.
Like I was checking out Dark Souls Nightfall 'cause of the documentary, and it looks cool, but I don't have Dark Souls on PC and I don't feel like paying $40 for it just to try a mod, and I'm in no mood to try to squeeze in some FromSoftware before Elden Ring.

I tried to install Spelunky 2 via Gamepass, hit an error, and stopped trying. Rogue/like/lites are a rough sell for me. I just wanted to try a Spelunky 'cause they are so beloved but I have a hard time with these low-graphics / high difficulty platformers like Celeste and Ori and have quit them all half-way through. So, whatever.

I saw that Sifu is going to be on PC and comes out 2/8, that game looks cool, I'll probably abstain from gaming until then.

 

[Dalisclock]

Jim/Stephanie Sterling gave this one a positive review. It does look cute, and I think it's on Gamepass.

Yeah, that's what prompted me to play it. Also the fact I already had it in my steam library. I didn't dig it quite as much as JSS did but it was an amusing 2 hour diversion with a cool gimmick. I mean, I like the art style and how they were used but the jokes were hit and miss for me. When the jokes are like half the game, that is an issue.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Finished Chapter 7 of Final Fantasy 13. There are 13 chapters in total, but that doesn't mean I'm halfway through the game yet because Chapter 11 is really, really long. From what I've heard second-hand, the start of Ch11 is about the halfway point of the game.

I completely understand why people hated/hate this game and turn it off early on. The game doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself, either in the story or the gameplay. The characters are interesting, but they take a while to actually get to the point of 'likeable'; the setting is great, but the characters don't explain it enough and it's left to the in-game Mass Effect codex (and I feel like Mass Effect did the exact same thing but it gets a pass because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯); and the game takes too long to actually start giving you enough options and tough enough enemies to justify using them all to be more fun than just 'press attack until things die'.

By this point in the game, though, everything's picked up enough that I'm really enjoying it and invested in seeing it through. The main party have all gone through some neat moments of growth, the combat's starting to get interesting and strategic without being totally overwhelming, and I never really minded games being linear to begin with, especially since the other Final Fantasy games have been about this linear before - just because 7 has a world map doesn't mean it ever gives you more than one place to go on it at a time, and contrive reasons for you to not break the sequence if it has to. Until right near the end of the game, where everything opens up and there's lots of sidequests to do... but none of them actually matter at all, and it's just so much late-game filler.

Anyway, I like 13, and I realize that isn't a controversial statement in 2022 like it was in 2010, but I still do. Not that I'm elevating it to "best Final Fantasy ever", but it's a long way from being the worst.

The worst is 2, BTW.

 

[BrawlMan]

I completed the Lost Levels in Doom 64. Fun and tough. They bring in a lot of Hell Knights and Nightmare Imps. The final boss is nothing special. You're just fighting the Mother Demon again, except it's her sister. There are a ton of invincibility items and all the ammo you need, so she is easy.

 

[meiam]

Finished Chapter 7 of Final Fantasy 13. There are 13 chapters in total, but that doesn't mean I'm halfway through the game yet because Chapter 11 is really, really long. From what I've heard second-hand, the start of Ch11 is about the halfway point of the game.

I completely understand why people hated/hate this game and turn it off early on. The game doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself, either in the story or the gameplay. The characters are interesting, but they take a while to actually get to the point of 'likeable'; the setting is great, but the characters don't explain it enough and it's left to the in-game Mass Effect codex (and I feel like Mass Effect did the exact same thing but it gets a pass because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯); and the game takes too long to actually start giving you enough options and tough enough enemies to justify using them all to be more fun than just 'press attack until things die'.

By this point in the game, though, everything's picked up enough that I'm really enjoying it and invested in seeing it through. The main party have all gone through some neat moments of growth, the combat's starting to get interesting and strategic without being totally overwhelming, and I never really minded games being linear to begin with, especially since the other Final Fantasy games have been about this linear before - just because 7 has a world map doesn't mean it ever gives you more than one place to go on it at a time, and contrive reasons for you to not break the sequence if it has to. Until right near the end of the game, where everything opens up and there's lots of sidequests to do... but none of them actually matter at all, and it's just so much late-game filler.

Anyway, I like 13, and I realize that isn't a controversial statement in 2022 like it was in 2010, but I still do. Not that I'm elevating it to "best Final Fantasy ever", but it's a long way from being the worst.

The worst is 2, BTW.

Honestly the more the game explain itself the worse it gets so I'd say the game does too good a job of explaining itself. I'd take a confusing non sense over "let's just do exactly what the bad guys wants us and just hope everything works out".

As far as linearity, they've always been linear game but you also usually had plenty of side area here and there, just to name a few in FF7 you could do plenty of optional content as you played trough the game like fort condor or Wutai tower.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

As far as linearity, they've always been linear game but you also usually had plenty of side area here and there, just to name a few in FF7 you could do plenty of optional content as you played trough the game like fort condor or Wutai tower.

Those don't give you any rewards for playing them that you can't get in other ways or never notice the absence of (e.g. Knights of the Round), and aren't even fun for their own sake. I'd rather the game stayed focused on what it was good at.

Also, do you mind not spoiling the plot? Just because you didn't like it, please don't try to ruin it for me. If you're so sure the game's going to, let it do that itself.

 

[Worgen]

Final Fantasy 4 pixel remaster. I modded it to have half exp gain so it feels more like it did on the snes, but still a bit easy. Not sure if that's cause I'm just better at RPG games or its just easier even with half exp.

I'm also really tempted to start up Gears Tactics again. Still kinda in the mood for games like that since I beat Phoenix Point. If Xcom 2 War of the Chosen was on sale I would probably grab it.

 

[meiam]

Those don't give you any rewards for playing them that you can't get in other ways or never notice the absence of (e.g. Knights of the Round), and aren't even fun for their own sake. I'd rather the game stayed focused on what it was good at.

Also, do you mind not spoiling the plot? Just because you didn't like it, please don't try to ruin it for me. If you're so sure the game's going to, let it do that itself.

Didn't you watch a playtrough of it?

Also Wutai tower in FF7 reward leviathan and Yuffie final limit, both unique to that side quest.

 

[laggyteabag]

Just finishing up Batman: Arkham City.

I would say that this is very similar to Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in that very few of the improvements are immediately obvious, at least from a surface-level perspective (ie, the game reuses a lot of the same models, animations, etc), but once you actually play the game, and all of the new mechanics come into play, you realise that it is actually a vastly superior game vs its predecessor.

This is probably the perfect "open-world" game for me. The map isn't ridiculously huge, there are lots of locations that frequently revisited which makes them recognisable and memorable, traversal is fun, the side quests are competent, and crucially, the game doesn't demand more than a dozen hours of my time.

Its a really enjoyable game, and I think it holds up exceptionally well.

 

[Dalisclock]

The worst is 2, BTW.

I didn't particularly like what I saw of FF13 watching a playthrough even though I love the ideas it has. I will agree with you that FF2 is probably the worst, having actually played FF2 despite all the painful mechanics. FF13 is at least a very pretty movie even if one that explains very little of it's world. FF2 is basically a bunch of neat ideas that aren't executed very well and it's not very interesting to watch either.

I mean the whole "you killed the evil emporer and he went to hell, but then took it over and now he's the king of hell and demons are pouring out of hell creating chaos" is a cool twist. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all there is of it right there.

Also, I apologize if I spoiled the only worthwhile plot point in a game from 1988

 

[meiam]

I didn't particularly like what I saw of FF13 watching a playthrough even though I love the ideas it has. I will agree with you that FF2 is probably the worst, having actually played FF2 despite all the painful mechanics. FF13 is at least a very pretty movie even if one that explains very little of it's world. FF2 is basically a bunch of neat ideas that aren't executed very well and it's not very interesting to watch either.

I mean the whole "you killed the evil emporer and he went to hell, but then took it over and now he's the king of hell and demons are pouring out of hell creating chaos" is a cool twist. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all there is of it right there.

Also, I apologize if I spoiled the only worthwhile plot point in a game from 1988

2 is more of a "saga" (like romancing saga or the FF legend game boy game), it sits very akwardly with the rest of the FF franchise and they snapped back to something much more like 1 with 3. Still I appreciate that the franchise tried to do different things, so many franchise have the "2" be an exact replica of the first game, its commendable that they tried to mix up the formula.

 

[Ezekiel]

Uninstalled Sekiro. Then hid it from my Steam library. Yeah, gonna be years before I play another of FromSoftware's try hard games. They used to be so much more fun before they fell victim to the whole "prepare to die" mantra.

 

[Dalisclock]

2 is more of a "saga" (like romancing saga or the FF legend game boy game), it sits very akwardly with the rest of the FF franchise and they snapped back to something much more like 1 with 3. Still I appreciate that the franchise tried to do different things, so many franchise have the "2" be an exact replica of the first game, its commendable that they tried to mix up the formula.

I do agree with you that I appreciate them trying something new and different. I appreciate Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 in the same way even though in each case the implementation left something to be desired.

In other news, I finished Snowhead Temple in Majora's mask last night. The temple was a bit more interesting then the Swamp one, being notably more vertical in nature and having the icy doors as barriers(which become trivial once you get fire arrows). It was kinda fun getting to mess around as a goron for a bit, especially since he no-sells fire and can punch really hard. Gonna go do some of the goron stuff(the sword quest) now with the ice melted and then try to get all the fairies I missed in the temple. I'm a little into day 2 so I hope I have enough time before I have to reset the loop.

The big robotic bull/goat boss was....it feels weird for a zelda game. I honestly can't remember fighting a big robot in any of these games before(at least, released before Majora's Mask). Normally it's basically a big monster that's there for reasons, so now it's a big robot(cyborg?) that's there for reasons so I guess Termina is just really weird? I mean, I don't expect the bosses to really have any backstory in zelda games, so I don't know what I'm expecting here. Also, the whole way you have to chase him down around the racecourse so you can beat him up reminds me of some other game but all I can think of is the stupid chariot from Dark Souls 2 and that doesn't really fit because you're trying to avoid getting run over by him. Maybe the great beasts from BOTW, because you have to chase them down before you can take them down? Maybe some of the SOTC bosses?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Didn't you watch a playtrough of it?

I did, but it's the principle of the thing. Though it does also mean that I know that you took that decision out of context.

Also Wutai tower in FF7 reward leviathan and Yuffie final limit, both unique to that side quest.

Yeah, and are either of those actually worth it? My take: Not really. Summons are just one-use AoE attack spells that have overly long animations you can't skip and don't deal enough more damage than a third-tier spell of the same level to justify casting more than once. And Yuffie's final Limit Break is actively worse than her LV3. So there's no reason to really do that other than to tie up Yuffie's arc... which is already pretty tied up by then.

 

[Fallen Soldier]

Uninstalled Sekiro. Then hid it from my Steam library. Yeah, gonna be years before I play another of FromSoftware's try hard games. They used to be so much more fun before they fell victim to the whole "prepare to die" mantra.

It’s a shame they carried this philosophy to Eldeb Ring. I was interested in it until I heard it was another Dark Souls type game.

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to pop in DmC and play VINO, and he's still only somewhat fun. He's got some neat mechanics with the Doppelganger DT (a slightly improved mechanic from DMC3), but it drains way to fast to get any real use out of it. You basically have to turn on the Super Costume to get any fun out of the mechanics, but turning it on reduces your mission rank by half. If you don't care, then this is a non-issue.

DMC5 further refined this with Vergil in the DLC/SE version. He's gets a Doppelganger DT with its slow and fast variations. In fact, called Slow and Haste. A la demon mode and angel mode from DmC. The difference being, he lacks the delay (sorta) attack options for the Dopple DT that is in DmC. There is delay you can do with the dopple, depending on button inputs this time. Also, Vergil again gets the attach summon swords to teleport towards demon manauver from his DmC counterpart. I am glad they kept it and refined the move even further. I did play some DMC5 last night as well. Just a few rounds of fun runs.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

This is probably the perfect "open-world" game for me. The map isn't ridiculously huge, there are lots of locations that frequently revisited which makes them recognisable and memorable, traversal is fun, the side quests are competent, and crucially, the game doesn't demand more than a dozen hours of my time.

The sheer detail of the open world, especially with how things shake up after certain side quests or main quests (feels weird to call them quests honestly), really made you feel the love and care the developers put into the game. Definitely up there as one of my favorite game worlds and open world games.

After they increased the size of the game world in Knight, I think a lot of that feeling was lost. The small details are still there, but much harder to find given how open everything is to accommodate the bat-tank.

OT: Ended up buying Fallen Order because dammit I need some Star Wars in my life again. But to play it, I'll need to uninstall Horizon Zero Dawn, which I never finished. Kind of conflicted, because while I really didn't enjoy what I've played of HZD, I feel like I'm missing out given how beloved it is.